One night earlier this year, I woke to see an elderly man in our bedroom. My partner and I had fled the deaths racking up during the coronavirus outbreak in New York to the relative safety of the countryside, where his family has a creaky, tumbledown home built in the 1890s.
When I saw the man – slim, with a white beard, white hair and sad, inquiring eyes – I sat bolt upright and shook my partner. “Who is that?” I whispered. Half-awake, he rose on his elbows and turned to look. “That?” he replied. “That’s me when I’m old.” Then he promptly fell back asleep. In the morning he had no recollection of our conversation.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen ghostly figures. A few years
