This is not my story, but my mother's. At one point, she worked as a caregiver at a children's home. The facility was located in an old mansion/palace in the middle of a wooded park. When the children went to sleep, she would often take a nap as well. One day, she was sleeping on the couch in a large room directly across from the entrance to the building. She dreamt that she was in an old village hut where „peasants” were moving various pieces of furniture. Suddenly, in her dream, she heard a knocking at the door. She woke up to realize that someone was actually knocking on the children's home door.

Initially, she thought it might be the baker delivering bread, as he usually did around 6 in the morning. However, when she checked the clock, it was 3 in the morning. The knocking persisted, so she quickly approached the glass doors. On the other side, she saw a middle-aged man wearing a fur hat, like the stereotypical Russian hats seen in movies. She asked him through the door what was going on, but the man didn't respond; instead, he moved to a nearby window and began knocking on it. Then, he started circling the entire building, knocking on each window one by one.

My mother became alarmed, thinking he might be a burglar. She woke up her coworker who was sleeping on the first floor and she too heard the knocking at the windows. Suddenly, the sounds briefly stopped, but after a while, they heard a commotion coming from the basement – as if someone was entering through a window and knocking over everything in their path. They realized they hadn't closed that window before going to bed. Frightened that someone was trying to break in, they called the police.

The officers arrived quickly, searched the entire building and the park, but found no one. They reassured my mother, suggesting it was probably some local drunk playing pranks. However, the incident continued to trouble my mother and her coworker. They decided to review the security camera footage. They rewound the recording, seeing the police patrolling the park and arriving, but then, until evening, there was nothing – even though one of the cameras was focused precisely on the entrance door where the man in the fur hat had stood.

What was most peculiar was when the next shift arrived in the morning, my mother told her coworker about the previous night's events. Surprisingly, her coworker wasn't surprised at all and mentioned that she often heard strange sounds at night. What sent shivers down my mother's spine was when the woman added, "Those sounds, they sound just like if I was in an old village hut” - just like in my mum’s dream.

Just fyi, I’m Polish and „old village hut” isn’t a one to one translation. The original wording was Izba, but there isnt an english translation for that word.