The Knocks That Returned to Saint Albans

Vermont has always had its quiet mysteries. Long corridors of forest, long winters, and a long memory for things that move outside the edges of the porch light. On the night of November 29, that quiet broke in a familiar way for one Saint Albans homeowner who woke to a series of taps on her second story bedroom window. She expected ice or branches. Instead she found nothing at all. No wind, no branch line near the glass, and no footprints in the powder beneath the eaves.

Around five minutes later the knocks came again. Three precise taps spaced evenly, as if someone were testing the pane rather than striking it. The homeowner froze and listened for movement on the roof. Hearing none, she stepped closer and drew the curtain back an inch. In the glow of a distant streetlamp she saw a tall silhouette pressed against the darkness outside the glass. Not a face, not a shape she could name, only a vertical form that shifted slightly as if standing on level ground where no person should be able to reach.

The next morning she called a neighbor two streets over to compare notes about local break ins. Instead she learned the neighbor had heard the same pattern of three taps on her own window at almost the same hour. Her dog paced and whined but never barked. When she checked the snow outside she found the same absence of prints. Two calls were placed to local dispatch. Officers responded, walked both properties, and noted that entry points were undisturbed and the snowline held no physical tracks from any human or animal.

Reports of a window tapping entity are not new to Franklin County. Between 2016 and 2019 several Saint Albans residents reported late night knocks and a tall shadow shape appearing in upstairs windows with no physical access point. Electronics sometimes flickered or lost signal during the activity. Those cases faded over time, and for six years the phenomenon lay dormant. The weekend disturbance marks the first clustered return of the pattern, with the classic details intact. Second story access without disturbance. Three measured taps. A silhouette taller than a person should reasonably appear at that height.

Investigators who track the region’s cases note that these events share traits with old New England tales of “night visitors” that remain separate from intruder reports and poltergeist activity. Whatever stands outside the window does not enter. It remains at the boundary, as if observing or checking for something rather than attempting harm. The two matched calls and the snowline evidence add weight to what might otherwise be dismissed as imagination during a long winter night.