The Man in the Doorway

I was about four or five years old and my parents had just separated. My mom was living in a two bedroom apartment, I had my own room but I liked sleeping in her bed whenever I was staying with her. Our two bedrooms were at the end of a hallway, directly across from each other. Our apartment was on the first floor, and I remember that it was in the middle of the summer and my mom had a window open her room, that was directly behind the bed (above the headboard).

Anyways, I woke up in the middle of the night and remember sitting up and seeing that our cat was sitting in the door frame of my mom’s room (her door was open and you could partially see into my bedroom). It was strange because our cat was a huge snuggler and was typically always in bed with us. As I was watching him he walked into my bedroom and meowed. I turned to face my mom and wake her up. In the three-four seconds it took her to wake up and ask me what was wrong we both looked back up in the door frame and there was a man standing by my open door, making his way out of my bedroom. I still don’t know how she managed to do it so quickly, but my mother proceeded to pick me up and literally throw me out of the screen window (again, we were on the first floor and it was maybe a three foot drop to the ground). She quickly followed and we were able to start screaming for help and someone called 911.

The police came but didn’t see any signs of forced entry. Only that our front door was unlocked which led them to believe the man must have exited that way. But the strange thing was that my mom swore up and down that she had locked the door that night, with the deadbolt and chain lock. About a week later she was cleaning the kitchen and opened up our water heater closet and found a notebook with names and drawings, as well as a pair of gloves and some gum wrappers. The man had been in our house and hid until we were asleep.