Footsteps at the cottage

As my previous posts appear to have caught attention, quite surprisingly I thought I would write this little piece, just as a little extra to try to prove a point.

During previous posts, I have mentioned strange encounters during my childhood and adult life which have, let us say perplexed me, although to many more have been labeled complete rubbish. Anyway, this little story started a couple of years ago now at our summer cottage and involves both myself and my son. I have mentioned the cottage before, but for the record it is situated miles from anywhere, we do have electricity, so heating and light are available but not much else. There are two buildings at the cottage, the cottage itself as well as the sauna cottage down by the lake. It was at the sauna cottage the these events took place. 

The sauna cottage

I have often lived at the cottage alone during my time in Finland, although not many of the other members of the family have done so. It is not that they are frightened of the place, it is just the fact that you are miles from anywhere, so if anything did happen it is difficult to get help. Also my bedtime stories about the place, including such incidents as the headless axe mudering chicken did not help very much, by the way these stories are still fondly remembered today. So it was quite surprising when my son told me a couple of years ago that he was going to spend a couple of nights alone at the cottage. For us this was very good as we have always wanted the kids to show more of an interest in the place. Now it seems they are always there, which is nice.

So my son spent a couple of days and nights at the cottage and everything went fine. It was sometime later that he told me that somethng strange had occurred and that he did not want to worry anyone about it at the time. It was late summer so still quite warm and after the mosquito season, so he could have the window open. It ws quite dark outside, when he heard footsteps, quite close to the house as if someone was walking about outside. Although the cottage is in the middle of nowhere, there are some neighbours quite close by, but they never come to our land even in the daytime, so never at night. My son turned off the light by which he was reading, and shone a torch around outside, but could see no one there. Luckily the outside door was locked and so no one could get in. He closed the window and although it was difficult at first to get to sleep, he finally did so without any further incidents. All credit to him, he stayed alone a few more nights and has been back alone many times since. When he told his story, as I said many months later, no one really took him too seriously, lots of suggestions were thought of to explain it. Such as an intruder checking the place out or maybe it was the neighbor checkig the light from the cottage, in case someone was trying to rob the place. And the whole thing was pretty much forgotten, until just before last Christmas!

The verandah at the front of the cottage

Every year just before Christmas my brother in law and myself have the tradition of going to the cottage and collecting the annual Christmas tree from our forest. We spend the weekend there, eating and drinking well, having a sauna and generally discussing this and that. As usual it went late into the night and it must have been two in the morning, when I decided to get some fresh air on the verandah. It was about 5 minutes later whilst looking into the darkness over the lake, I heard what sounded like footsteps walking through the dried leaves from the side of the house. They appeared to be coming closer and as I waited I fully expecting to see someone come around the corner of the house and up to the verandah. The sound stopped for a moment, and then started again seeming to get closer to the corner and suppposedly into my view. But just as the "person" should have reached the corner the sound stopped. I don't remember being afraid, I had, had some drink but was not in anyway drunk, but looking back it must have been enough to give me "Dutch courage", because I went to the corner of the cottage fully expecting to find someone behind the corner. But no one was there, so I started thinking about what could have made the noise. An animal? a deer of somekind? No to both these thoughts, what ever it was, it was definately two footed. Ok, the wind? The wind blowing a branch of the tree that grows next to the cottage. The branch was scrapping across the roof back and forwards as it moved in the wind. But there was no wind, the night was still. I walked around the cottage, fully expecting to find someone, but once again no one was there and I would have seen someone running away. So the whole thing is another mystery, when I got back into the cottage my Brother in law was already sleeping and in the morning the subject did not come up. It was only after Christmas that I remembered my son's story, but again whenever we meet I forget to talk to him about it.