We all knew the place was … well, something was wrong with it. Was it haunted? We weren’t sure. Weird things could be heard at night. Mumbling. Conversations when people weren’t there. The house had a narrow hallway that descended to the lower story bedrooms and made a 90º turn in the process. At the end of the first leg of stairs was a large mirror, and the effect was somewhat macabre.

One night, while alone in the house, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. As we were in the middle of nowhere, I was terrified. But nothing emerged from the hallway into the livingroom where I sat armed with an axe.

The next day a partial handprint appeared on the mirror in the hallway. As it seemed about the size of my (then teenage) hand, I was blamed for it. But when I went to clean it, I discovered that what originally appeared to be the print of a right hand on the surface of the mirror… was actually a print of a left hand on the inside… between the reflective coating and the glass?

Nearly a decade later I coincidentally learned that the place had burned down.