The Night the Ghost Got In

The Night the Ghost Got In Summary | Detailed Summary

The story begins with a remembrance of the night of November 17, 1915. The narrator expresses remorse for not going directly to bed after a misunderstanding sends the house into chaos. Considering what is about to happen - that his mother will throw her shoe out the window and his grandfather will shoot a police officer - the narrator apologizes for acknowledging to the footsteps he heard.

He begins to hear the footsteps around one o'clock in the morning. His mother and Herman, his brother, are asleep in their respective rooms. The grandfather is upstairs asleep in the attic. The narrator gets out of the bath and dries himself off when he hears footsteps. Since they sound like a man downstairs, this causes alarm. At first he starts to dismiss the possibility by thinking that it must be his father or his other brother Roy, who are expected back from Indianapolis at any time. However, when he begins to think that it might be a burglar he says, "It did not enter my mind until later that it was a ghost" (pg. 55).

He goes to Herman's room and wakes his brother. Herman has always been fearful that something would get him during the night, so the narrator identifies himself as his brother and tells him that he thinks there is someone downstairs.

Together they go to the back staircase and listen. At first, it is quiet and Herman decides he wants to go back to bed. The narrator will not let him, insisting that there is someone downstairs. The steps begin again. Startled, Herman goes running back to bed, slamming the door behind him. The narrator slams the door at the top of the stairs shut and waits. After a moment he checks and finds nothing on the other side of the door; the footsteps are never heard again.

However, the slamming of doors wakes the mother. She asks what the boys are doing and they tell her nothing. The mother wants to know about the footsteps downstairs. The boys are surprised because she had heard the steps as well. The mother shouts out that it must be burglars and the narrator quiets her and starts tiptoeing downstairs. She stops them.

The mother insists that they should call the police, but the phone is downstairs. Not sure of what else to do, she opens her bedroom window, picks up a shoe and throws it, breaking the next-door neighbor's window. She wakes the Bodwells and the mother tries to explain to them that there are burglars in the house, but Mrs. Bodwell is threatening to sell the house. When Mr. Bodwell finally understands that the mother threw the shoe through the window because of burglars, he misinterprets it to mean that there are burglars in his house. Finally, the mother conveys that there are burglars in her house and that she needs him to call the police.

After Mr. Bodwell goes to call the police, the mother gets it in her head that she enjoyed throwing the shoe through the window and aims to throw another shoe. The narrator prevents her from doing so.

The police arrive - in cars, motorcycles, a patrol wagon, along with reporters. They pound on the door and shine their flashlights around the house and yard. The police demand that the door be opened, but everyone is upstairs. The narrator offers to go downstairs, but the mother will not let him because he is naked from the bathtub. He wraps a towel around his waist and the police break the door down. The police catch the narrator at the top of the stairs in his towel. They ask who he is and he tells them that he lives in the house. The narrator then goes to put on proper trousers.

The police go through the house, looking all over for intruders. The mother tells them that there must have been two or three burglars and that they were slamming doors and carrying on. The police find this odd because all the windows and doors are locked.

As the police continue searching the house, they go through drawers, open and close windows, and check behind and under furniture. They uncover a zither and the narrator explains that his brother Roy won it in a pool tournament and that their guinea pig used to sleep on it. The police give the boy a strange look and continue.

The police draw the conclusion that no one was in the house and comments on the boy being naked and the mother hysterical. Suddenly, they hear a creak in the attic. The narrator knows that this is his grandfather, but the police burst upstairs.

Having woken the grandfather from a sound sleep, he mistakes the police for war deserters. He jumps out of bed in his long underwear, nightgown, nightcap and leather jacket. As the police, now realizing that the grandfather is a member of this crazy family, start to retreat, the grandfather grabs hold of one of the officer's guns and fires.

He shoots one of the officers in the shoulder. He fires the gun two more times, as the police run downstairs and then goes back to bed as if nothing happened. The narrator explains that the grandfather thinks the police are deserters.

The cops are reluctant to leave, beleaguered that they were not able to apprehend a suspect. They decide that something about the report seems phony; they continue to look around. A reporter talks to the narrator and asks what is really going on in the house. Finally, he relents and tells the reporter that there were ghosts. The reporter stares at him vacantly for some time and then walks away. The cops follow suit and the officer that was shot curses that he is going to get his gun from the grandfather. His fellow officers chide him about making an attempt. The narrator tells them that he will bring the gun to the police station in the morning.

After the police leave, the mother asks what happened to the policeman and she is informed that the grandfather shot him. When she is told that it was because the grandfather thought he was a deserter, the mother is shocked, thinking that he looked like such a nice man.

The story ends the next morning at breakfast. The family thinks, at first, that the grandfather has no memory of the night's events. Over coffee, he looks at his grandsons and asks what the police were doing at the house in the first place.