Hunting in Schaumburg Townhome

This took place back in 2001. My cousin’s family had just moved from their apartment in Schaumburg, IL to a townhome across town. It was around Christmas and they had us over for a get-together. My cousin, my two brothers, and I were playing in his room. I noticed my cousin—who was normally an extremely talkative guy—was unusually quiet. After a while we asked him what was going on. That’s when he told us he thought his house might be haunted. He explained there had been strange noises and things getting misplaced. His parents had noticed it too, but they chalked it up to being forgetful and just getting used to the sounds of a new home. When I asked if he’d seen anything, he said he’d seen something fly off his desk with some force, and that his window had just opened on its own. The window is important. It was the kind with the locking latch on the top, and it had been painted over a few times so it wasn’t easy to unlock. The frame was wooden, with no springs or easy-open hardware—just friction to slide it up or down. A few hours passed and we were still in his room watching TV when we heard the click and the window slid open. After our freak-out (we were all somewhere in the 10–14 age range) we closed it and went back to watching TV. Not 30 minutes later, the papers on his desk and a model car he had sitting there came tumbling down. The papers and the car had been tucked toward the back of the desk, up against the wall, but they ended up a few feet out from the desk, closer to where we were sitting. Almost on cue, we heard the window latch click again and the window opened back up. After that we went downstairs to hang out with our parents. I talked to my cousin recently, and he says to this day that when he goes home to visit his parents, he still refuses to sleep in his old room.