Creepy Window
You know how when you live with someone you develop these sort of household jokes? The kind of stuff that wouldn’t really be funny to anyone else because they simply weren’t there and the premise doesn’t really hold up when you try to explain it? Growing up “creepy window” was the inside joke that my father and I shared.
My childhood home was a bit odd in design. It wasn’t very big but there were two stories and a basement – plenty enough room for just my father and I. The top story was fairly normal, two bedrooms a couple linen closets and a bathroom. The floor plan downstairs however was incredibly open. This meant that unless you were in the little half-bath or we had the library closed off (something we only ever did in the winter) you could essentially see into any room from any other room. More importantly to the story, you could see the dining room windows on the north-facing wall from virtually anywhere on the first floor.
There were three windows on that wall. They were large but also high up which let a lot of natural light into the home without sacrificing privacy in that area, something that I’m sure was intentional with the design. The windows were all identical, which I guess is what made the situation so funny. We were sitting on the couch in the living room getting a movie set up when my dad said “hey, look out creepy window.” We had never discussed the window before, but when he said that I knew right where to look; the dining room window on the far left.
It wasn’t that the window itself was creepy; it looked exactly like the other two after all. I had never really associated that word with it until Dad said something, but I had on a subconscious level realized that something about the window was off. It caught the light in such a way that was different than any of the other windows. This was especially noticeable at sunrise and sunset; the sky would appear to be two radically different colors from that window than from the two beside it.
That day when we first talked about it, for example, the sky was a shade of deep blue when viewed from all of the windows except that one, from which it appeared to be almost lilac. We had been staying in the house for about a year at this point and this wasn’t the first instance of something like that happening. I was only twelve and I guess I just hadn’t thought about why that window always seemed so strange until someone else pointed it out.
What my dad found amusing more than the pink tint out of that one spot, was the fact that both of us had apparently at separate times noticed the bizarre, almost unnatural quality that the coloring had right there. He used the phrase “creepy window” expecting to puzzle me but instead, I had immediately been drawn to the place he’d been referring to. Thus the joke of creepy window was born.
When we were done laughing about it he did the parent thing and took the teaching opportunity to explain to me about how the angle of light can affect our perception of color. I eagerly accepted the explanation for something that had been lightly nagging at the back of my mind for awhile by then. My curiosity was, for the time being, satiated and life went about as normal.
From that point we would often crack jokes about the window, pointing it out when we noticed a substantial difference in the light and making up crazy alternative explanations. These theories ranged from alien technology to radiation effects, to the supernatural and covered just about everything between. When we had guests sometimes one of us would casually bring up creepy window, leaving the other to explain the situation as best we could. One thing that other people seemed to have in common was that they found creepy window to be more “creepy” than “funny” or amusing like my father and I did. I guess in the time we had spent living there we had just gotten used to it, to the point where it no longer seemed so abnormal.
Gradually, over the years, I began to suspect that there might actually be something wrong, or dare I say, creepy, about creepy window. I started noticing things aside from the lighting that just didn’t quite line up with reality as I knew it.
The first thing was that I never saw animals outside of creepy window. I first noticed this one day while looking for my cat. He had snuck out through the fence to sunbathe on my neighbors back porch, something he did often. That was one of the first things that I checked, only I couldn’t see him through the window. I went outside and sure enough, there he was right in the middle of the porch. I figured he had just gotten there which is why I hadn’t seen him, but after I wrangled him back inside I started to think about it. As far as I could remember I had never seen him or any other pets through that window. No birds or squirrels or anything either. Since cats, birds and squirrels aren’t creatures that are well-known for posing, I had no real way to validate this, but as time wore on I continued to not see animals through the window.
With my interest in the situation renewed, I began to actively check the view from out of creepy window on a regular basis. It wasn’t exactly an obsession, but it did become part of my daily routine. A few months passed without me witnessing anything exceptional, and I had begun to relax some. Then it rained.
It was late fall in Ohio, so it’s not like it was a rainy season or anything, but neither was it unheard of. I was in the dining room doing my homework when I glanced up. There was no sign of rainfall outside creepy window. I stood up and walked around some, trying to get a better view or find an angle to look at that gave me better visibility, but no matter where I stood I couldn’t see the rain. It was falling fast in big drops and that was a fact that I could easily confirm by looking out any other window in the house. I spent the better part of an hour that night fixated on the situation, but I could find no explanation.
Of course, that was the same night where Dad had to work late, and by the time I saw him the next morning at breakfast the rain had stopped and I had nothing to show him. I held my tongue, but waited for another storm. A few weeks later the skies were cloudy and overcast and sure enough, when it began sprinkling, there was still no sign of water outside creepy window. I pointed it out, trying to sound casual.
Dad laughed it off. “That’s creepy window for you,” was all he said. The situation had already become too much of a joke to concern him, I realized. I did my best to let it go. I thought that if my father wasn’t worried about the totally random views from that window that I didn’t need to be worried about them either. If I had learned anything from my years living in that house and looking out that window, it was that it doesn’t take a lot for our perception of something to become wildly skewed.
I actually ended up doing a science project on the whole thing for school one year. I obviously omitted the term “creepy window” to get it approved by my teacher and keep my classmates from mocking me. I can vaguely recall titling the paper something obnoxiously long in the hopes that my teacher would find it more sophisticated. I thought that was exceedingly clever, but my peers found it pretentious and in retrospect, I don’t blame them.
I don’t remember the paper very well but I do remember the rest of the project. I kept a “Light Refraction Log” to document the way that light can affect color. I got a few disposable cameras and every day for two weeks I would wait until sunset and take three pictures of my dining room windows. One would should the world from outside the middle window, one would should the light from creepy window, and one would show all three windows together to prove that the first two were taken at the same time. I didn’t want to risk failing the project because my teacher thought I playing an elaborate prank.
I didn’t include it in my paper, but I began to notice a pattern in the photos that made me believe the view might not be as random as I had thought. The sky color from the pictures taken through creepy window one day would almost perfectly match the sky color from the pictures taken from the normal windows the day after. It was almost like there was a 24 hour preview into the next day. If my teacher noticed it she didn’t say anything and I felt no need to point it out.
The idea that the window was somehow showing me the future seemed absolutely ridiculous to me, even with as young as I was and the amount of evidence I had leading me to that conclusion. I went back and forth about what to do with the information. Part of me desperately wanted to tell my dad in the hopes that he would have a more rational explanation for me – like he had the night when we had first discussed creepy window. I was afraid though, in case he didn’t take my concerns – or me – seriously. What scared me even more than that was the idea that he would take it seriously and I’d find out that something really was wrong.
I started keeping a closer eye on the window. There were days when I’d see moisture on the glass and I’d feel my entire body go cold. The next day it would never fail to rain, which would always leave me with a sense of dread. It was days like that, when I had been able to accurately predict the weather, that I almost broke my silence on the subject, but I never did. Creepy window was just some dumb, inside joke. I felt like it would be safer if it just stayed that way.
You’d never believe just how easy it is for adults to forget things that seemed important to them as children. Creepy window was something that alternated between the coolest thing ever and utterly terrifying, but it was something that was always relevant to me growing up. It seemed life changing, like the kind of thing I’d never be free from. Then I grew up. I moved out, went to college, got a job and an apartment and just like that, creepy window ceased to matter. On the rare occasions I thought about it, it was just a fading memory of an inside joke that I had let myself get spooked by in my earlier teenage years. My dad and I had other things to talk about when he’d call and eventually I didn’t think about it at all.
Yesterday I came back to town to visit him, however. I dragged my bags up to my old room and got settled in. I spent some time reminiscing before I came down to let him know I was ready to head out for dinner. Near the bottom of the stairs I glanced up and saw out creepy window for the first time in years. Memories of the thing and my ongoing suspicions about it hit me hard and it was all I could do not to scream as I looked out into the red, fiery oblivion that was waiting for me just beyond the glass.
~~~
Inspired by a true story.
Art Credit: "View From Creepy Window” by Coffeenoir
