The Man in the Corner (A true Ghostly Tale)

The Man in the Corner

(A True ghostly Tale)

This took place about 25 or so years ago when I was living in Chicago and working as a Resident Manager for an apartment building on the city’s northside in the neighborhood known as Wrigleyville. One of the perks at the time was that as a Resident Manager, I’d been given a two bedroom garden apartment as part of my salary. My wife and I occupied the master bedroom which was located in the rear of the apartment just past the kitchen, and my oldest daughter who was three years old at the time, occupied the second, smaller bedroom.

It was November of 1992, and although I’d worked for the owner of the property prior to this, taking over the job of this particular building had occurred on the first of the month and my second daughter was born the following day, on the second of November and when she and my wife came out of the hospital, they were coming home to a whole new residence. And being that my second daughter was newly born, it was clear that my wife and I would be sharing our room with our new child, so I’d put the crib up in the room just a couple of steps from our bed.

The first week that my wife and new born daughter were home (We named her Judith), it seemed odd but not too weird, that Judy had some difficulty sleeping in her crib in the bedroom, whether we were in the room or she was alone. My wife would hold Judith in her arms and lull her to sleep, singing softly to her, and then manage to lay her in her crib. Moments later, Judith would suddenly awaken screaming and crying her poor little lungs out, and either myself or my wife would have to pick her up and bring her out into the living room. And more often than not, it would be my wife who would hold her in her arms and the two would fall asleep, my wife sitting up on the sofa, the baby in her arms or laying on her stomach in her playpen.

And that’s the way it was, from the time that Judith and her mother came home from the hospital until well after the new year! Any night (or day for that matter) where we attempted to get Judith to sleep in her crib in our bedroom, she would last no longer than five minutes before she would start screaming loudly and crying, as though something was terrorizing her. My wife and I actively sought out what the problem could be as to why we couldn’t get her to sleep in our room! Having taken Judith to the doctor for a complete exam, the conclusion was that there was nothing physically wrong with her that would cause her to act in such a manner. We were at our wit’s end by the time March arrived. My wife had no longer taken to trying to sleep in our bedroom and was now sleeping each night on the sofa, while Judith slept without a peep, in her playpen set up in the middle of the living room.

Then one afternoon, as my wife and I were in our bedroom talking, our three year old came into the room as we were discussing Judith’s particularity on sleeping in her crib.

“It’s the man in the corner.” Our oldest said, almost matter-of-factly.
“What?” My wife and I seemed to ask at the same time, the two of us turning our attention to her.
”The man in the corner.” She said again. “He doesn’t like us!”

Neither myself or my wife knew how to respond to what our three year old was telling us.

“What man?” I remember my wife asking and my daughter raised a finger and pointed towards the corner of the bedroom near the closet door. I remember my wife and I looking at one another wondering if our three year old had lost her mind. It was then that she began telling us about the man who lived in the corner of our bedroom.

She described him as being quite old and having lots of wrinkles. He was short, about my wife’s height of five foot five, with long gray hair and big red eyes and a mean look about him. She said that he was always yelling and screaming at her to stay out of the room and for that reason she’d rarely go into the room. He lived there in the corner and never left it. She continued to tell us that he would scream and yell every time Judith was in the room and it was he who scared her and wouldn’t let her sleep. She also said he talked funny.

Now it’s been said that children are more in tune with seeing such things as ghosts, I’m not if it’s because their minds are not fully developed or that the way they see things are different that how an adult does, but my wife and I had pretty open minds about such things so we didn’t treat what she told us as some kind of made up fairy tale. In fact, I called up the owner of the building that evening and without directly telling him about what was going on, gave him a cock and bull story about someone who’d come to the building looking for an old man who had previously lived in my apartment. He knew of course who I was talking about and told me about the old man.

His name had been Cosmin and had been Romanian. He’d been the Resident Manager of the building a dozen years prior to my becoming Resident Manager and had worked for my employer’s father when he had owned the property. My employer remembered him as a “Mean old bastard” who hated children. And when I asked if he could describe him, the description he gave matched that given my daughter to the letter, including his manner of speaking as Cosmin had a thick Romanian accent! Apparently, the old man had died in the apartment having suffered a massive heart attack back in 1982, the same year that my employer’s father had passed away.


Later that evening, I told my wife about what I’d learned and from that day forward until I left that job and we moved into a new apartment, she never slept in that bedroom again. As for my daughter Judith, she never once slept in the bedroom nor did her older sister who told us about the man in the corner. As for myself? Well, I never had any problem sleeping in that room and was never bothered by Cosmin’s ghost. I guess two old and cranky bastards can get along!