The Man in the Corner

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Happy Halloween!

You might be wondering what the big guy is up to on this All Hallows’ Eve. Is he safe? Is he warm? Has he eaten? Is anybody keeping an eye on him? Has he managed to avoid whatever unspeakable fate might await him after dark?

Well, dear reader, I am pleased to report that I am alive, well-fed, and in reasonably good spirits. I am also writing this from inside a 146-year-old Victorian mansion in Sacramento, California, which may cause you to reconsider all of that.

It’s Halloween night, October 31, 2026, and I’m sitting in a dimly lit parlor at an enormous antique table, upon which somebody has arranged an equally antique-looking chess set. The table creaks whenever I move, and I’ve conveniently discovered an electrical outlet running along the floorboards. So here I am.

Why am I here? Well, I’m spending the weekend at Sac Gamers Expo, a gaming convention taking place at Cal Expo. Today, I dressed up as Hero Prinny from Disgaea, met some lovely people, and participated in my first cosplay contest. It was a wonderful time. Afterward, I retired to downtown Sacramento, where I spent an unreasonable amount of time playing a broken Tetris arcade machine while a Halloween party slowly erupted around me.

But the convention is a story for another day. Tonight, I’d like to talk about ghosts.

You see, when I was planning this trip, I decided to book myself a room at the HI Sacramento Hostel. This establishment occupies an enormous Victorian mansion, and as luck would have it, I would be spending Halloween night inside it. What fun!

And now that I’ve arrived, I must admit that the place is even more ridiculous than I’d imagined.

The building is extraordinarily quiet. The floors creak, the furniture groans, and just about every object makes an unfamiliar noise when disturbed. The hallways wind around in peculiar directions, and I’ve already managed to get lost more than once. At one point, after wandering around looking for my room, I somehow found myself standing on the same landing I’d departed from several minutes earlier.

There’s also a rather unsettling masquerade mask near the staircase that I must pass every time I want to reach my room. It’s positioned in such a way that it appears to be watching me approach…

The lighting is equally suspicious. Certain rooms are illuminated by a handful of lamps, while others have red light bulbs. There seems to be a deliberate refusal to illuminate an entire room at once. Enough light to find your way around, but not quite enough to be certain about what might be lurking in the corners.

Speaking of corners, when I first entered my room, I noticed an old upholstered chair tucked into one of them. It looked rather creepy, so naturally I wanted a photograph. I took note of its position, turned around to set down my belongings, and when I looked back, I could have sworn the chair had rotated an inch or two toward a nearby lamp.

I actually had to straighten it again to get the picture I wanted.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the chair moved by itself. I could have bumped it, or misremembered its original position. But I am suggesting that this is a remarkable thing to experience within five minutes of arriving at an enormous Victorian mansion on Halloween.

And it reminded me of something that happened several years ago.

The man in the corner

Around 2021, I was attending UC San Diego. My sister Emily was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I would occasionally visit her for the weekend.

She lived in an old gated residential community on Colgate Avenue, in the Beverly-Fairfax area of Los Angeles. The surrounding neighborhood has plenty of buildings dating back to the 1920s and ’30s, the sort of prewar Los Angeles housing that people always seem to mention with a little extra menace. I don’t know the exact date her building went up, but it certainly looked the part.

It was a lovely place, with large windows, plenty of grass, and communal outdoor spaces. Despite being quite old, the buildings were cozy and charming. She eventually moved out after a particularly nasty storm caused massive flooding, but while she lived there, I always enjoyed visiting.

One weekend, I was sleeping on the couch in her living room.

The couch was positioned against the wall, and from where I lay, I could see across the living room toward the large windows and the front door. There was a little alcove near the entrance.

At some point during the night, while drifting in and out of sleep, I noticed something in the corner of that alcove.

It looked like a man.

More specifically, a tall, slender man wearing what appeared to be a top hat. He was little more than a shadowy silhouette, but the shape was distinct enough to startle me.

Now, I wasn’t particularly frightened. I was half-asleep, and I figured that some object in the room was casting a peculiar shadow. Our brains are remarkably good at finding recognizable shapes in places where none exist. I thought little of it, rolled over, and eventually went back to sleep.

But I remembered the figure the following morning, and decided to mention it to my sister’s boyfriend, who is now her husband.

His response was not what I expected.

He immediately retreated down the hallway, looking for my sister.

“Emily! Jackson said he saw the man in the corner!”

Emily came out, seemingly astonished.

“You saw it too?!”

And suddenly, the two of them were frantically explaining that they had both seen a man in that exact corner.

A tall man.

Wearing a hat.

I hadn’t even told them about the fucking hat.

That’s the detail that has stayed with me.

I hadn’t elaborated on the figure’s appearance. I hadn’t described his height or mentioned the top hat. Yet the two of them were already describing what sounded like the exact same silhouette, and telling me that they’d each encountered it independently.

Apparently, I was the third person to see the man in the corner.

Now, what am I supposed to make of that?

I still think the figure I saw was probably a shadow. I was drifting between sleep and wakefulness, and there’s plenty of room for the mind to play tricks under those circumstances. Perhaps there really was something in that alcove that consistently produced the same silhouette under certain lighting conditions.

But that doesn’t quite capture how strange the next morning felt.

I had gone to sleep believing I’d seen an ordinary shadow. I woke up, casually mentioned it, and discovered that two other people were apparently familiar with the same man.

I haven’t had another experience quite like it.

The other side of the wall

A few months ago, a friend’s father told me a story that made me think about all this in a completely different way.

He spent many years working in IT, installing Internet equipment and running cables through buildings. Sometimes this work took place in hotels, where he and a coworker would have to crawl around inside walls and ceiling spaces while guests were occupying the rooms.

Obviously, the hotel couldn’t simply evacuate all its guests every time somebody needed to install networking equipment.

So the two of them would go about their business, dragging cables through crawlspaces and making whatever noises were necessary to get the job done.

Occasionally, they’d hear guests becoming suspicious.

Somebody would notice a strange sound coming from inside the walls. They’d start investigating, perhaps walking around the room trying to figure out where it was coming from.

And what did these two IT technicians do?

They would freeze.

They would stop moving, stop working, and even slow their breathing, desperately trying not to reveal their presence inside the walls.

Imagine being on the other side of that interaction.

You’re staying in a hotel. You hear something moving inside the wall. You get up to investigate.

The noise immediately stops.

You stand there listening.

Nothing.

Eventually, you decide you’re imagining things and return to bed.

Then, after you’ve settled down, the mysterious scratching and shuffling resumes.

The explanation, of course, is perfectly obvious:

There are two grown men hiding in your walls, and they are actively trying to avoid detection.

I cannot imagine a more efficient way of accidentally manufacturing a haunting.

From the guest’s perspective, the noises appear to react intelligently to their behavior. Whatever is inside the walls seems to know when somebody is listening.

From the technicians’ perspective, they’re just trying to finish installing some effin’ Ethernet cables without causing a scene.

And somehow, the mundane explanation is almost more ridiculous than the supernatural one.

A little room for the unknown

I don’t know whether ghosts exist. I have no compelling reason to believe that the man I saw in my sister’s apartment was anything other than a shadow.

And yet, I can’t explain away the peculiar feeling of hearing two other people describe him before I’d had the opportunity to do so myself.

Likewise, the story about the IT technicians reminds me that seemingly inexplicable events can have completely ordinary explanations. Sometimes the thing moving inside the wall isn’t a ghost. Sometimes it’s a contractor trying to do his job.

But knowing that doesn’t necessarily make the world any less strange.

I think that’s something I particularly enjoy about Halloween.

For one night, we give ourselves permission to entertain possibilities we would ordinarily dismiss. We turn down the lights, tell each other unsettling stories, and take a little pleasure in wondering whether something might be watching us from the darkness.

We don’t have to convince ourselves that the supernatural is real to enjoy the possibility.

In fact, perhaps it’s better not to know.

Right now, I’m sitting inside a mansion that’s well over a century old. The lights are dim, the building is quiet, and every movement I make seems to produce some new and unfamiliar noise. Upstairs, there’s a chair that I briefly suspected of moving when I wasn’t looking.

And somewhere between this parlor and my bedroom, that goddamned mask is still waiting at the top of the stairs.

I know perfectly well that all of these things have ordinary explanations.

Probably.

So here’s my suggestion for tonight, dear reader.

Turn off a few lights. Sit somewhere quiet. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Give your surroundings a little time to become unfamiliar.

And if you hear something moving inside your walls, don’t be too quick to assume it’s a ghost.

It might just be an IT technician.

Of course, if the noise stops the moment you start listening, that doesn’t exactly settle anything, does it?

Happy Halloween, dear reader. I hope tonight finds you somewhere with a few dark corners of your own.

As for me, I still have a winding staircase to climb, a masquerade mask to confront, and a chair in Room 33 that has already demonstrated a rather suspicious degree of autonomy.

And should you be wondering whether Yackson intends to investigate any strange noises tonight, whether he’ll venture into those dark hallways in pursuit of the unknown, or whether he’ll ever again turn his back on that goddamned chair?

Quoth the Yackson: “Nevermore.”

Happy Halloween!