Blanket, Pardon?

Boy, I must be really hard up for content on here.  I mean, how many times have I woken up over the years and seen a sinister figure standing at the foot of the bed or in the doorway, only to realize it was something benign like a hanging jacket or a microphone stand or a bookshelf or Pop superstar Michael Jackson?  And I've never blogged about that, have I?

But here I am with an even lamer story.  You're welcome, I suppose.

I don't get up to go to the bathroom every night, but I often do--and when I do, it's usually right around the time the sun is starting to rise (yes, exactly the time you are starting your day).  This was one of those times.  

What I saw.

I stepped into the hall, glancing across to the living room . . . and I saw what appeared to be--only for a moment, but hey, a moment's enough--a shroud-wrapped person peering at me from the couch.  I froze in my tracks, wondering if maybe my sister had fallen asleep there . . . or if that woman I left for dead on the side of the road back in Tuscaloosa had finally found me.*

I switched on the hall light, and oh, okay, it was just a blanket, nothing more.  I could barely even make out how my brain could've seen a human shape there.

With the light on.

But then I went to my room to get my camera, hoping to be able to recapture what I saw . . . to no avail.  It's hard to recreate something that was never really there to begin with (though it might be fun to try to write a story about it).

What I saw, in that instant before coming fully alert, reminded me of an illustration from 1904 that accompanied "Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You My Lad" by M.R. James (in his book "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary"), that has always stayed with me.  Okay, "always" as in, for the six or seven years since I discovered it.

So, it was nothing.  I recognize that.  But before I went back to bed, I grabbed my phone and took the above two pictures, hoping that they'd convey what a thousand words wouldn't.  I guess I was wrong. 

*Yes, I know I should've checked on her, at least checked for breath on a mirror or something, but I was already late for Big Head Todd and didn't want to miss Broken Hearted Savior.