Whistling Man
Back in 1973 or1974 I was a high school student. I was into heavily playingwargames and chess and was friends with a guy who ran a chessstudio and also liked wargames. I’ll call him John becausethat was his name. At the time this particular incident happened,the chess studio was on the third floor of an old wooden building.John had told me that the studio was haunted, that he’dheard footsteps on the stairs, and, my memory is shaky here, butI think he mentioned having felt a presence at times. Nothingreally scary, at least he seemed comfortable with it, but he'dsensed enough that he really believed it.
Anyway, we had wrapped up our wargame for the night, which Ibelieve he had won (he usually did). We'd gone down the stairsand had just exiting the building when we both heard someone waswhistling "This Old Man". This was not some unearthlysound, nor was it weak and far away. It was good, loud strongwhistling. Although it would have been unlike him to pull a trickto freak me out, I watched his lips. It wasn’t him. It wasnighttime and raining out, but there was plenty of light fromstreetlights to see by and there was no one about. It must havebeen 10:30 or 11:30 in the evening and this town was dead by thenif you’ll pardon the pun. He mentioned the ghost and I askedhim "Why "Whistle Man"?" (I had the name ofthe tune wrong, but hey, I was a little rattled.) He said he didn’tknow. By this time we were by his car, the whistling wascontinuing, and it was CLOSE and no one in sight! And he hadspoken while we heard the whistling, I had still suspected atrick and had watched him speak feeling sure that the whistlingwould stop when he answered me.
The whistling stopped as we both looked around to see if we couldsee anyone. He went back up the stairs to see if there wassomeone hiding inside and I went around the closest corner of thebuilding. Neither of us saw anyone or found anything. That wasit, end of the show. John drove me home and now that it was allover I found my legs were shaking.
It could still have been someone playing a joke. Although someonelaying for us in the rain late at night seems kind of loony,people can be strange at times, and we didn’t check theroof, for example. But it was loud and so close sounding I don’tknow where anyone could have hidden. I did ask him a few yearslater if he remembered this and if he had perchance pulled a fastone on me somehow. I figured if he denied it had happened I wouldhave known I’d misremembered somehow or maybe dreamed it,and he was a good enough friend to have felt comfortablerevealing any trickery knowing I would have enjoyed knowing howit was done. He remembered the incident and no he hadn’tfooled me.
It wasn't really that I mistrusted him , by the way, trickerywould have been very unlike him. I just believe in ruling out anyother explaination before I resort to saying I saw or, in thiscase, heard a ghost.
The building is still there (I checked a couple of months ago).Someday I want to interview the current occupants to see ifanything strange has happened to them, but I’m not sure howto go about it. Most people just are not going to open up aboutthings like that. I would appreciate suggestions on that.