Unseen Arrival

I was born in 1984, and this incident happened in 1989 when I was just 5 years old. I’m the middle child of five siblings, and it was late in the year when my mom was in labor, about to give birth to our youngest sister. My dad and a family friend were taking her to the hospital in our town, leaving my eldest sister and me home alone.

At that age, I had no idea about ghosts or hauntings. I wasn’t paying attention to how much time had passed since they left, but I figured it was around midnight, maybe a little earlier. My sister had already fallen asleep, and I was sitting beside her on the couch.

The couch was right by the window, which was high up off the ground. There was no way anyone could climb up to it from outside. I remember being wide awake, just watching my sister sleep, when something strange happened. I saw a hand—just a small, delicate hand—appear on the outside of the windowpane. It was the hand of a baby, from the wrist up, with the palm facing me.

At the time, I didn’t get scared. Maybe I was too young to understand fear, or I didn’t know how to react. I kept staring at the hand, feeling oddly calm. In my little 5-year-old mind, I thought it was the hand of my soon-to-be-born baby sister.

I can’t remember much of what happened after that, but I do remember that my parents came home the next morning with our new baby sister.

I didn’t tell anyone about what I’d seen that night until I was 25 years old. Even now, whenever I think about it, I get chills. I wonder why I didn’t feel scared or horrified back then. Maybe, like I said, I was just too young to process it. But I know for sure that I saw what I saw. If that had happened now, on one of these nights, I’d probably be screaming my lungs out or frozen in fear.